Jeffery Deaver - The Bodies Left Behind

Waving his hands like a traffic cop, Graham walked to the passenger window, which was open. Joey looked straight at him with a fierce expression.

Graham said, “Shut off the engine. Get out of the truck.”

“No.”

“Joey. Do it now. This minute.”

“You can’t make me. I’m going to look for Mom.”

“Out of the car. Now.”

“No.”

“There are people doing that. Tom Dahl, some deputies. She’ll be fine.”

“You keep saying that!” he shouted. “But how do you know?”

True, Graham thought.

He saw the boy’s edgy eyes, his firm grip on the wheel. He wasn’t short-his father was well over six feet-but he was skinny and looked tiny in the big seat.

“I’m going.” He still couldn’t make the turn down the driveway so he eased forward, tapped a trash can and backed up again, this time judging correctly; he stopped before he hit the shed. He straightened the wheels toward the road and put the truck in forward once more.

“Joey. No. We don’t even know where she is.” Saying this seemed like a retreat. He shouldn’t be arguing from logic. He was commander-in-chief.

Instinct, remember.

“Lake Mondac.”

“Shut the engine off. Get out of the truck.” Should he reach in for the keys? What if the boy’s foot slipped off the brake? One of Graham’s workers had been badly injured reaching into a moving truck, just like this, trying to grab the shifter when the driver forgot to engage it. Our bodies are no match for two tons of steel and detonating gasoline.

He glanced at the seat. Jesus. The boy had a pellet gun-Graham recognized the powerful break-action model. At close range it was as accurate as a.22, and as deadly to squirrels and river rats. Brynn had forbidden him to have weapons. Where had he gotten it? Stolen, Graham wondered.

“Joey! Now!” Graham snapped. “You can’t do anything. Your mother’ll be home soon. And she’d be furious if you weren’t here.”

Another retreat in the be-the-parent-in-control game.

“No, she won’t. Something’s wrong. I know something’s wrong.” The boy let up on the brake and the vehicle began to roll forward.

And, not even thinking, Graham ran in front of the vehicle and stood there, hands on the hood.

“Graham!” Anna called from the porch. “No. Don’t make a war out of it.”

And he thought, no, it’s time somebody did make it a war.

“Get out of that truck!”

“I’m going to find Mom!”

The only thing keeping him alive was a twelve-year-old’s untied running shoe on the pedal of brakes that had needed servicing for a year. “No, you’re not. Shut the engine off, Joey. I’m not going to tell you again.” When Graham was a child, that was all his father had needed to say to get him to comply, though the offenses back then were things like failure to take out the trash or neglecting his homework.

“I’m going!”

The truck lurched forward a foot.

Graham gasped but didn’t move.

If you move, he told himself, you lose.

Though his mind was also running through the places he could leap if the boy floored the accelerator. He didn’t think he’d make it in time.

“ You’re not going!” the boy raged. “Are you?”

He was inclined to say, It’s not our job to go. Let the police do their thing. They’re the experts. But instead he said calmly, “Get out of the truck.”

Aware that his instincts might be about to kill him.

“Are you going to go find her?” He muttered something else. Graham thought one word was “coward.”

“Joey.”

“Get out of the way!” the boy screamed. His eyes were wild.

For a moment-an eternal moment-Graham believed the boy was going to hit the gas.

Then Joey grimaced, looked down at the shifter and shoved it into park. He climbed out, reaching for the gun.

“No. Leave it.”

Graham walked up to the boy and put his arm around his shoulders. “Come on, Joey,” he said kindly. “Let’s get some-” The boy, who seemed furious at this defeat, shrugged the gesture off and stormed into the house, past his grandmother. Saying not a word.

AFTER A COMPASS reading, the women continued through a portion of the park less entangled with shrubbery and ground cover than the area they’d left behind, around Lake Mondac. There were patches of clearing-grass and meadow. And, increasingly, imposing rock formations pushed up by glaciers millions of years ago.

They walked in silence now.

A quarter mile from the last compass check Brynn was about to ask Michelle how her ankle was feeling. Instead, she said, “My husband is too.”

Shocking herself.

Did I really say that? she wondered. My God, did I really?

Michelle glanced at her, frowning. “Your husband?”

“Just like yours.” Brynn inhaled the cold, fragrant air. “Graham’s having an affair.”

“Oh, God. I’m sorry. Are you separated? Getting a divorce?”

After a pause she said, “No. He doesn’t know I found out.”

Then she regretted speaking. This was absurd, Brynn thought. Just shut up and keep walking. But she wanted to tell the story. Desperately wanted to. Which was curious because she hadn’t shared it with anyone else. Not her mother, not her best friend Katie from the Fire Department or Kim from the parent-teacher organization.

In fact, she supposed it was significant that only here, in these extreme circumstances, with a complete stranger, could she talk about what had been tormenting her for months. Part of her hoped Michelle would respond with a few words of sympathy, that the subject would dwindle and they could get back to completing their trek. But the young woman responded with genuine interest: “Tell me. Please. What’s the story?”

Brynn arranged her thoughts. Finally she said, “I was married to a state trooper. Keith Marshall.” She glanced at Michelle to see if the name had registered.

It didn’t seem to. Brynn continued, “We met at a State Police training seminar in Madison.” She remembered seeing the tall, broad-shouldered man standing in front of the table that served as their desk.

Keith had glanced her way with a lingering gaze that confessed he certainly liked her looks; but she hadn’t really caught his interest until her turn to run a mock hostage negotiation, which the psychologist running the exercise said was perfect. What really got his attention, though, seemed to be the Glock field-stripping and reassembly test. She had her slide mounted and clip loaded while the runner-up was still struggling to get the locking block pin back into the frame.

“That’s pretty romantic,” Michelle offered.

What Brynn had thought too.

After the seminar they’d had coffee and discussed small-town policing, and small-town dating. He’d winced once and she’d asked if he was all right. Then he explained that he’d just gotten back from a medical; he’d been shot in a real hostage rescue, which nonetheless ended happily-for everybody but the hostage takers.

“The HT’s didn’t quite make it.”

Oh, that incident? she’d thought, recalling the bank robbery gone bad, two armed tweakers-meth heads-inside a branch of Piny Grove Savings with customers and employees. The windows were too thick for a safe sniper shot, so Keith had walked around the barricade and through the front door, holding his weapon at his side. Not even crouching to present a smaller target, he’d shot one in the head, took a round in the side and in the vest from the other one, then killed him too, through the kiosk he tried to hide behind.

The HTs didn’t quite make it.

Keith had recovered quickly from his minor injuries. He was reprimanded-it had to be done-for the Bruce Willis/ Clint Eastwood procedure. But nobody had treated his disobedience very seriously and, of course, the media had lapped it up like a kitten gorging on milk.